"Carolee? The lady at table fifteen is complaining that her steak is over cooked."

Carolee blew her bangs off of her forehead, straightened her shoulders, and with a smile at Sissy, she walked out into the dining room to apologize to table fifteen.

"Hello?" She bent down on one knee to be at eye level with the upset looking elderly lady. "I heard that we failed in cooking your steak to your liking?"

The blue haired lady gave Carolee a piercing look. "Are you the manager?"

Carolee nodded, keeping the smile on her face. "Yes, I am. I am so sorry about your steak. Can I put another one on the grill for you? Or perhaps you'd like to order something else?" Carolee already knew in the back of her mind that this was a customer that wouldn't be satisfied with just a free dessert, or a re-cook. Carolee was going to be buying this lady dinner. After awhile, you could read your customers, and usually your gut instinct about them was correct right from the start.

"Yes, well, I find this quite unacceptable. I ordered this medium rare, and look at it. Hardly pink at all." Carolee nodded in agreement with the lady, as she saw the perfect pinkness of a medium rare steak sitting there in the middle of the lady's plate. "I quite agree. It is unacceptable, and I really apologize. Please, let me take care of this for you. I'll get another steak going right away, and can I get you a free salad or appetizer or something while you wait?"

Finally the lady smiled, and said a salad would be nice. Carolee walked back to the kitchen with the steak, and asked Leroy to fire another one. "Make this one more on the rare side, okay?"

"But Carolee, I used the thermocouple on that steak just like every other one. It was at exactly 145 degrees!"

"Yes, Leroy, I'm sure it was. But the customer is always right. Get the lady another one. I don't need the labor from you right now, Leroy, just give me the baby, okay?" Leroy grunted, but threw another sirloin on the broiler.

Carolee quickly whipped up a nice dinner salad and took it back out to the lady at table fifteen. The senior was all smiles now. "Why thank you, dear." Carolee smiled, again apologized, and promised to personally bring the new steak right out.

As she was heading back to the kitchen, Mike ambushed her with a request for another bottle of chardonnay from the wine fridge. Carolee grabbed her keys out of her pocket and headed back to the wine cage. The wine cage was an enclosed storage room in the rear of the restaurant where all the wine and beer and various liquors were locked up. Sissy was in the back walk-in refrigerator grabbing some ketchup to back stock the alley. Sissy was a newer employee at Applebee's, and table fifteen's waitress. Carolee gave her a smile as she unlocked the wine cage and grabbed out the bottle of chardonnay. "Hey, Sissy. That new steak should be right up and I'll run it out."

"Oh, okay. Thanks, Carolee. That lady sure was an old cow." Sissy frowned. "And her steak looked perfectly cooked to me."

Carolee locked the cage back up, wine bottle tucked under her arm. "Yes, well, you know what I always say. 'Kill 'em with kindness.' She'll be fine when I get the new steak out to her. She already had relaxed some with the free salad."

"That's all the lady probably wanted, you know, is just a free meal. She probably does it in every restaurant in the city."

"Perhaps you are right Sissy, but maybe she's just a lonely woman that needs attention, and that's what I'm here for. We won't go broke by buying one steak."

Sissy followed Carolee back out towards the front of the kitchen. "I guess that's why you are the manager then. You know how to keep us from killing the customers!" Sissy smiled.

"Yes, well, I guess that is why I make the medium bucks!" Carolee teased her employee. Sissy looked perplexed for a moment, and then burst into giggles.

Leroy was placing the steak on a plate and putting it back up in the cook's window as Carolee approached. She thanked Leroy, grabbed the newly cooked steak, dropped the wine bottle off for Mike at the bar, and proceeded to table fifteen. "This one is prepared correctly for you, I assure you." Carolee waited patiently while the woman cut into her steak, tasted it, and then smiled. "Why, it's just perfect." The woman squinted at Carolee's nametag. "Thank you, Carolee. You've made my experience here a much more pleasant one." Carolee smiled, thanked the woman for her patronage, again apologized, and left the table to return to the hectic state of the kitchen.

It was just another night at Applebee's.

Carolee had worked at this restaurant here in Oregon for about two years. She had fled a dreary Seattle, where she had also worked as a restaurant manager at a fine dining establishment downtown. She had needed a change, and this smaller chain restaurant was a nice step away from the turmoil and stress of her big city life. The people she worked with here were practically family, and many of the customers were regulars. So far it had been the best two years of her 33 year old life.

As she sat down in a corner booth near closing time to eat a quick dinner, one of those regulars, Chuck, sat down across from her with his coffee cup in hand. "Busy night for you, Carolee?"

She smiled in between bites of her chicken salad. "Aren't they all?"

He chuckled. "Ah, yes, but you thrive on it. I can tell. Any kind of nine to five job would bore you silly. You like the adventure and pace of the restaurant life, don't you?"

She had to agree. She was a work-aholic, and it was fine with her. She loved the interaction of the people, meeting and talking with so many different kinds of customers all day long. And her employees, for the most part, were a joy. Sure, every once in awhile you had that lazy or insubordinate one, but here at Applebee's they were all pretty tight. And she loved to know she was helping these kids in little ways every single day. Carolee might not have a family of her own, or children of her own, but many of the employees here were young enough to have been her children, and they came to her for advice constantly. To know she touched their lives as they touched her life was very rewarding and fulfilling. She hoped she had that kind of impact, because sometimes she'd look back in her own life and remember her mentors and bosses, and how they had helped to shape her. Every person you met and interacted with, Carolee believed, helped you to grow into the person you would become. She always tried to make it a caring and positive experience for all her employees. Relationships were much more important to her than the bottom line. Although, she knew making a profit was important too. Without that, none of them would be here. But she believed in the philosophy that if you treated the customers right, they'd keep coming back, and happy employees fostered the kind of environment that was welcoming to patrons. It was all a never ending cycle. Yes, she loved her job.

"I wouldn't know what to do with all my free time in a normal eight hour job, that's for sure, Chuck."

"Perhaps you'd find a nice young man? Have more time to socialize?"

Carolee took another bite of her salad, not looking up at the older man. Chuck was like their "Norm" of that television show "Cheers". Except Chuck was wealthy, in his late fifties, and didn't seem to have anything to do at night except hang out at the bar and tease all the waitresses. Carolee found him to be kind of creepy at times. Like now, for instance. She didn't know if he was flirting with her, concerned about her, or just teasing. She finally just shrugged. "Some guy would have to land on the hood of my car for me to notice him. And even then, I'd probably just leave him by the side of the road. I'm too busy and independent for that nonsense." That wasn't necessarily the truth. In fact, Carolee wanted nothing more than to find that dream of a soul mate, but her past with men had been too painful to contemplate going through all that emotional upheaval again. If it happened, great, but she wasn't going to go hunting for it on her own. And her personal life was also none of Chuck's business.

Thankfully, another employee approached her. They couldn't find any more sugar packets. Were they out? Carolee sighed, picked up her half eaten dinner, and started for the kitchen.

"Never get a warm meal, do you Carolee?" Chuck said, standing up and heading back to sit at the bar.

"Tonight it was a salad," she said over her shoulder. "It's supposed to be cold."

She didn't see his expression as she went back into the kitchen. He watched the doors close behind her, tilted his coffee cup up and drained it's remains, then threw some money on the bar top and left the dining room for the night.

A lot of the late night business at Applebee's consisted of teenagers hanging out with their friends after the local ball games. Tonight was no exception. Who needed the gym, thought Carolee, when you could run around at work all night long, carrying big plates full of food, heavy tubs full of dirty dishes, and lifting full garbage cans? Work was good, work was busy, work was noisy and a constant motion. It kept Carolee from thinking and from self-loathing. It gave her other things to think about, other than her loneliness.

After closing up the place for the evening Carolee set the security system and locked the front door at a little after one in the morning. The restaurant was located in a shopping mall, so even though it was late, the parking lot was lighted fairly well, and a security guard would drive around in his little security jeep every half hour or so. Most nights, she'd see him driving around, gathering up stranded shopping carts, or chasing teenager punks out of the lot.

Technically, the closing manager was supposed to walk out with another employee, but Carolee had taken her time doing the bookwork tonight, and was not finished in time to walk out with the last employee. Gus, the night dishwasher, was in a hurry that night so she let him leave. He hardly hesitated before racing out the door. So, on this night, Carolee found herself alone when she walked around the perimeter of the building to her small car that was parked out back by the garbage dumpster area. Employees always parked in the rear, leaving the lot parking for the customers. But Carolee had to exit through the front in order to set the security system. She scanned the lot for the security guard's vehicle, and just saw him round the corner of the mall at the west end of the lot. No other cars were around. She was alone in the silent parking lot.

Her keys were in her right hand as she walked to her car, her briefcase in the other hand. She glanced up at the stars. It was a crisp and clear evening. No cloud cover on this autumn night, which was unusual in Oregon. Every star twinkled and seemed magnified in the glorious midnight blue of the sky. It awed Carolee, and made her feel even smaller and more insignificant to look up into a sky like that. Was there life out there in the universe, other than Earth's? Were any of the stars shining out to her still in existence, or were they all burned out bulbs, their brilliance still traveling down to be seen, before being snuffed out completely? Carolee shivered in the night breeze. How anyone could be an astronaut, she had no idea. The thought terrified her to no end.

Carolee's little red mustang was parked right under a streetlight. She pushed the unlock button on her key chain, and opened up the door, throwing her briefcase across the driver's seat and onto the passenger's seat. Before she could climb in, however, a strong arm came from behind her, with huge fingers crushing her windpipe.

She saw his reflection in the window of her car. It was Chuck…only it wasn't. As she stared at him, his hair grew long and wispy down his back, his nose elongated into a point, his teeth sharpened and looked like razors gleaming in his mouth, and his fingers felt leathery and hard around her throat, the fingernails growing into sharp points before her eyes. Carolee tried to struggle, but she was losing ground quickly, the oxygen deprivation causing spots before her eyes, and her lungs screamed for breath. She was just on the point of collapse when she heard them come up behind Chuck. His arms were torn from her neck, and she bent over gasping for breath. When she finally regained enough of herself to notice what was going on, she saw two men severing the thing that used to be Chuck's head from his shoulders. It's held fell with a plop to the ground, and then disintegrated before their very eyes.

"What was that?" The young man that asked the question had shockingly dark hair, and was wearing an eye patch. The other man with him turned and slowly approached Carolee. "Are you okay, Miss?" She nodded slowly at him. He spoke with a silky British accent, and if Carolee wasn't already weak in the knees from the attack, seeing this handsome man before her would have done her in.

The younger man approached her as well, but his eyes turned to his companion. "What was it, Giles?"

"I believe it was a Snog Demon."

"Snog Demon? What did it want, besides her of course." He smiled shyly at Carolee, who took no offense. "Well, um…" Giles took his glasses off and began to clean the lenses with his shirt front. "I believe Snog Demons need to eat the heart of a virgin every few years."

The two men then both gazed at Carolee. If it wasn't for the darkness of the night, they would have seen that she flushed vigorously. Xander looked upon her in awe. A virgin, at her age? But Giles smiled down on her with something akin to respect. "You are Carolee, correct?"

She could only nod. And then she realized her life had begun to change, forever.

Chapter 3